The thing about having fun while doing an interview over the phone is you sometimes give up TOO much information.

The other day I got to talk to Robert Plank on Skype about how I optimize my blog for profit. We talked for 30 minutes and had such a great conversation about blogging… that many times I forgot that Robert was recording the call!

We shared our favorite strategies, favorite plugins, our favorite marketers, and more. I came at it from a copywriter’s perspective, which is something you probably haven’t seen before. (So let me know what you think)

In the future, only people who join my email list will get access to this interview. And while I hope you have signed up to receive announcements, I am going to let you access the recording today with no restrictions.

Here it is: http://www.stephensblog.com/robertplank

Hope you enjoy it, and don’t forget to check out Robert Plank’s blog. He set a goal to make $30,000.00 for the month of February and he’s almost there. I’m sure he’ll let you know if he makes it at the blog.

PS In the video I talk about using testing, multivariate testing and some plugins. A while back I made a video showing how to do all of these things. I’m going to do a 24 hour special for the video tomorrow; it’ll be for $15.

But as a thank you for reading this entry, you can get it now for $10 through the Paypal button below.

A few days back I told you how to increase traffic to your website using my blog.

The 4 point plan was to exchange links with me, comment on my posts, link from a post of yours to mine and to follow me on Twitter.

Many of you did these things and I greatly appreciate it. I’m also glad to see you’re being proactive.

But I am disappointed with 2 things.

One, no one has exchanged links with me. I know, cry me a river. But I’m really trying to make this Wordpress Link Directory work. My next post will be on how to set it up on your blog just in case you’re unsure how to do it. And then hopefully you’ll exchange links.

Two, some of the comments that have appeared since I invited you to comment for SEO reasons have been, I guess predictably, skeptical. There were a couple that forced me to make a decision on whether or not they were spam or legitimate comments by a reader.

I want people to get some link love back to their sites, but I also want comments that constructively add to the conversation.

So here’s what we’re going to do.

I’ve changed the “DoFollow” plugin I’m using. It’s now Lucia’s Linky Love and it only changes your links from “nofollow” to “dofollow” after you’ve made 5 comments. This will protect the blog from drive by commenters.

At some point, I may raise the barrier to 10 comments before you receive link love from me. But for now it’s 5.

Now I don’t want you to leave a bunch of “junk” comments in order to hit the 5 comment barrier. So if you don’t have 5 comments yet, don’t worry! You can still get some link love from me by exchanging links in the link directory It’s here: http://www.stephensblog.com/dir

And if you want to start boosting your comment count now, why not let me know what you think about this policy? Leave a comment

Remember when I had Click2Mail send me a test postcard for ad campaign? I wrote about it here: Sending Postcards To Advertise Your Product Or Services.

Well it finally showed up yesterday. It took a LONG time…

…because of user error. My fault. I accidentally picked “standard mail” instead of “first class.” Instead of 4-5 days it took 9-15. (And I saved a whopping 11 cents!)

So that’s one mistake I noticed. The other is the graphics program I used to create the postcard.

Microsoft Paint just isn’t going to work! I saved the image I made in paint as a .jpg file, which looked fine until it showed up on a printed postcard. There’s too much noise surrounding the words… as a result of Paint not saving the .jpg at a high enough quality.

It’s possible that Paint might be able to work if I save it with another image format. But whatever…

Instead I’m going with Gimp. This is a free software program that acts a lot like Adobe Photoshop (a great program, but very expensive).

Gimp will be able to make a high quality screenshot and fix my postcard.

One more note. I took the advice to keep all of my content an inch up from the bottom in case the post office put a sticker on the bottom. The postcard did not get a sticker. In fact, I think the “sticker” was printed on the card.

However, I don’t want to risk it unless I need the extra space. So I’ll continue to heed that advice for a while.

I found this link this morning. Ken Mcarthur lists his best email subject lines (based on open rates) from 2008. It’s good to see people posting real data!

He also writes quite a bit about how to evaluate statistics. All in all, a great post. Go check it out!

http://theimpactfactor.com/blog/?p=220

Tonight I was struck with an idea that involved easily adding reciprocal links between blogs. I decided to do a google search to see if I could find anything that had already been created.

I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but it’s pretty close.

A Wordpress Link Directory.

You can see an example of what it looks like here: http://www.stephensblog.com/dir

I love it. It encourages reciprocal links… and with the click of a button will delete any links that aren’t associated with a reciprocal link.

Brilliant. Love it. Try it. Wordpress Link Directory

Michel Fortin tipped me off to this awesome headline writing formula by Perry Belcher:

I just checked the mail and it didn’t come today, but it’ll get here soon.

The order was fulfilled on Saturday, and I’m not sure where it’s mailing from… but it shouldn’t be longer than a few days. What am I waiting for?

I sent a postcard to myself via Click2Mail.com. I wanted to make sure the card looks presentable before I start sending it out to a select group of individuals.

The postcard advertises a special deal I’m offering to certain people for my copywriting services. And Click2Mail.com seems to be a great place to print and mail my offer at an affordable rate.

Here are the steps I took to get my first postcard in the mail.

1) I created a free account at Click2Mail.com. It’s simple to do, just like signing up for any other free account online.

2) I browsed around and found “Postcard” under the “Create A New Mailing” category.

3) Then I picked the 5X8 space saver postcard that can ship in yellow. Michel Fortin told me that oversized yellow postcards worked best in his experience. So this is as close as I could find.

4) I found this post at copywritingboard.com that gave me a ton of ideas on how to design the postcard and craft my offer. Using Postcards To Market Your Services

My biggest takeaways were to keep it simple… a headline and bullets outlining the offer. And make sure the offer is on both sides. I also remembered to keep my contact info away from the bottom of the card so that it doesn’t get covered by any sort of sticker the post office might place on it.

5) I found it difficult to design the postcard on Click2Mail.com’s website. Instead I used a combination of OpenOffice.org’s Writer software and Microsoft Paint. Both are free (well, Paint comes with windows).

I used Writer to design the postcard (which is mostly words, no pictures). Then I pressed “print screen” on my keyboard to take a screenshot of the postcard in Writer. Then I opened Paint and pasted it in. I selected the area I wanted for the postcard, cropped it (under “Image” in the menubar), and used “Save As” to save the image as a .jpg file.

I did this for both the front and the back of the postcard. Both .jpg files that could then be uploaded to Click2Mail.com and positioned on the front and back of the postcard.

6) From there Click2Mail.com walks you through the mailing process. First you select recipients (which was just me for the test run), proof the post card to make sure everything looks right, then pay for the mailing.

It’s quite affordable. Around 49 cents per postcard with the options I selected above. That’s barely more than the price of a stamp!

I’m very happy with the process so far. If you check me out on Twitter (StephenPDean), I’ll make sure to let you know how the post card looks when it arrives.

If you send out your own postcards, let me know!

I’ve been watching my blogs web statistics lately. If you have a blog, I highly recommend doing that as well. Some things I’ve noticed…

1. This blog’s audience has grown every month since I started posting regularly in January.

2. There are a few topics my readers aren’t too interested in. I can tell, because when I post about them, my traffic stays about the same as if I hadn’t posted at all. If I didn’t know this, I could post this blog into the ground. But checking my stats lets me know to move on to something else, or… else!

3. My stats can tell me what keywords were used to find my blog in the search engines. This has helped me to discover which keywords I already rank well for, and which keywords I’m close to ranking well for. Some strategic posts can solidify my search engine ranking for those terms, and I get even more traffic.

4. Being ranked well for some keywords don’t help at all. For example, the keywords “Internet Advertising Copywriter” hasn’t gotten me a single hit, despite my ranking.

5. I’ve still got a lot of work to do 

Most likely, your webhost has some sort of web statistics installed on your server already. Recently, my hosts stats program have become less reliable (along with a ton of other problems over the last 6 months). So I’ve started using www.statcounter.com. It’s free up to a point, but you need to upgrade if you’re getting more than 500 visitors. I’m going to see what the stats look like with the 500 visitors before I make my final decision.

I purchased “Web Copy That Sells” by Maria Veloso before I moved, but just started reading it last night. It was recommended to me by my copy coach, Michel Fortin.

I’ve only read the first chapter, but I already picked a few tips (that made it into the copy I was working on today). I’ll share some of those with you soon, but I highly recommend picking up the book yourself:

http://webcopythatsells.com/

Hi guys,

A free gift for you today…

In 2002 I set out to write an ebook based on this premise. I wanted to ask successful business people, if they lost their list and all their resources, how would they build up their business.

Since then, that model for an ebook has been copied several times. (And I was a dummy for never releasing my version.)

BUT, my guide was very different. It took on the angle of setting up Joint Ventures, or endorsed mailings, to generate a lot of sales fast. And remember, this is if you don’t know ANYONE first.

I’m giving you a free copy. Right click the link below and choose “Save Target As” to download the .pdf to your PC.

www.ebizknowitall.com/itscallednetworking.pdf

Let me know how you like it.